


and don't let my cry be heard

by Smilla



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 2008, Angst, Episode: Are You There God? It's Me, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-01
Updated: 2010-04-01
Packaged: 2017-10-08 14:17:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/76478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smilla/pseuds/Smilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I will teach you how to be His instrument.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and don't let my cry be heard

"The day will come," Castiel says, "when you'll have to do what I say without asking. Without breathing first. This is the kind of obedience your deliverance has to be paid with."

There's something terrible in the shadows the moon casts on Castiel's eyes, something dark and pulsing and fierce. Dean swallows fear and bile and part of Castiel's breath. It tastes of ozone and something raw beneath it, like rotting flowers at a grave. Like grief.

Castiel steps closer, becomes bigger, taller than the body he's wearing. Taller than Bobby's kitchen, and then taller than the sky with its full-lit moon.

It's hot inside, inside Bobby's kitchen and Dean's head. Liquid fire, Castiel's parched lips on Dean's.

Castiel sweeps his tongue inside Dean's mouth, just the tip, but it's enough to paralyze and scare. It's a moment. A flash of something and Dean's brain shies away, retreats and cowers, but Castiel pulls it forward, pushes it, toward the darkness and the pain, the gasping breaths of not enough air, not enough air and enough pain.

"It's all right," Dean hears Castiel say when he's back at his vessel's size, human size. Lean body slightly shorter than Dean's. A faint tang of sweat.

"It's just memories your brain can't deal with."

There's enough compassion in Castiel's voice to nearly mask the menace of what he's just done.

Dean gasps for air and grabs the counter.

"You need to learn," Castiel says and his voice goes softer yet. Tender. "I'm going to teach you."

The light of the morning sun is oblique through Bobby's window. Smell of fresh coffee and Sam's steps. Sam's steps and his sunny smile. Sam's smile and a vague sense of unease that soon dissipates.

***

Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma are flat land whenever Dean looks. Roads so straight they meld and melt into the midday sun. Summer lingers on the treetops in flashes; intermittent, through the leaves, sunrays are blinding. By comparison, the sky's too blue.

Dean watches Sam as he drives, his body loosely fit on the leather of the driver's seat.

"What did you hunt?" Dean asks while he fingers the hard surface of the dash. "You know, while I was away." Dean looks through the windshield and at the road.

Sam's silence draws long before he talks. Dean closes his eyes and listens.

"Lilith," Sam says. He takes a breath. Adds, "A bit of everything. Demons, mostly."

Sam's answer is quiet, his voice doesn't quiver or break. It doesn't go softer at the end of the sentence, or lower. There's a fierceness in it, though, and Dean, with his closed eyes and the noise of the tires gliding smoothly on the asphalt, Dean, for a moment, imagines another time, different trips. The exact same roads. John's voice a litany of orders.

The dos and the don'ts. His sharp commands.

"You good?" Sam asks much later. "Are you hungry, thirsty…." He raises one hand from the wheel and waves it in the air, long fingers bony and calloused.

"Do you want to drive?" Sam asks.

"I'm good," Dean says. "I'm gonna sleep for a bit."

 

***

They chase the last of summer to Dumas, Texas; follow demonic omens: an electrical storm, cattle mutilation. They follow Castiel's directions.

Mr. Hastings takes them into the barn. The stink of manure mixes with the one of fresh hay and blood. Dust motes swirl in the sun. The barn's empty of animals and Mr. Hastings dusts his Stetson on his thigh, scratches his thinning hair.

"Fifty-two head," he says. "All in a night. Never seen anything like that."

He waves toward a darker corner of the barn where a cow's hanging on a hook from its hind legs. The legs are swollen, the stomach and chest a black cavity ridged with point sharp bones. An explosion from the inside out.

"Never seen anything like this," Hastings repeats.

"You're gonna tell me what the hell happened, here?" Hastings pleads.

Sam bends to take a closer look.

Dean observes the hook, instead, as it goes through the soft tissue of the legs, the metal braced on the sinews, the darkened blood there. He stares and stares and can't look away.

Distantly, he hears Sam saying they're gonna get to the end of it. To the end of it, Sam promises.

To the end.

***

The end of it is one of the five demons in Dumas. An average guy with a rounded gut beer who threatens and splutters maledictions from inside the seal of a devil's trap.

Dean drew it himself on the cement floor of Mr Hastings' barn, chalk staining the tips of his fingers in powdery white that Dean wiped on his jeans.

The demon walks the lines like a captive lion, his eyes flicker away to the four bodies on the floor. One by one, Dean and Sam trapped them into the seal; one by one the demons fled from already dead bodies.

The demon looks at Dean, says, "I ripped your limbs one by one."

Says, "I drank your blood 'till the last drop."

Says, "Pulled your bones from your body and left you on the floor, writhing and screaming your brother's name."

The demon walks to the very edge of the seal, looks at Dean's eyes and says, "And then I started again. Don't you remember?"

Dean flinches when Sam jerkily raises his arm, the demon smirks, false bravado twisting his face. Because they're sending it to Hell, Sam and he, and the demon knows it.

Dean isn't going anywhere, instead. He isn't going anywhere as long as he does what Castiel asks of him.

Dean glances at Sam's blanched face, at his arm raised mid-air as if to strike, and the shadows the moon casts on his eyes paint something dark and terrible.

The smell of sulfur makes bile and coffee rise to Dean's throat and he swallows it down, chases it away. Dean wavers, weightless like a leaf in the wind. Searches Sam's eyes to ground himself, but Sam's watching the demon so intently and he never looks at Dean.

Sam shakes his head, lowers his arm. He starts reciting the ritual, stumbles on the first words, like they're catching on a closed up throat.

Go on, Dean thinks. "Go on," Dean says, puts his hand on Sam's shoulder and feels the stiffness there, tight-coiled tension in the muscles of Sam's back. Dean grabs the collar of Sam's jacket, presses his thumb on the warm skin of Sam's neck.

Sam's voice becomes louder. Higher than the screams of the demon, fiercer than the screams of the demon when it leaves the body and dissipates.

Invocato a nobis sanctus et terribli nomine, quem inferi tremunt .

Wind blows inside the barn, slams the door on its hinges twice. Dean sees Mr. Hastings' body rock back and forth from where it's hanging from a hook.

***

On their way out of Dumas, Dean asks about his cassette tapes.

Sam swerves the car suddenly, parks on the shoulder of the road. Dean's got a reproach on the tips of his tongue, but it gets lost in the noise the driver's door makes when Sam climbs out.

Dean steps outside and thinks of endless trips across these same roads, of the illusion of freedom. He looks at the horizon, large enough behind fields of corns and grass burned by the hot summer Dean lost.

Sam opening the trunk pulls Dean back to the now, to Sam's profile as he opens it, the frown of concentration as he twists the key so it doesn't jam. Sam had never been able to do it as smoothly before.

There's no space in the trunk anymore. Every inch and nook is filled; guns and books, ammunition and amulets.

The blunt instruments and the beliefs behind them all ordered and collected in rows and piles.

Dean asks, "So, why are you so hung up with this angel stuff?" It's an easy question and one Dean didn't intend to ask.

Sam shakes his head, a secret smile on his face. He pulls a box from the furthest corner of the trunk. It's too big to contain only Dean's cassette tapes.

Dean's name is marked on it in red. The letters are slanted, tremulous like they were drawn by a child.

"Here," Sam says, puts the box on the yellowish grass and kneels in front of it. He leaves his hands on the brown carton, palms down, fingers fanned. He strokes the box with his thumbs. Sam's hands are so big they nearly cover the entire surface of the box, cover what look like water stains and darker, rust-colored spots on the corners.

Dean kneels, too, and the ground is warm and Sam's eyes are calm when he looks up. Sam shakes his head, that secretive, small smile still on his face. He opens the box, but there's a sort of reluctance in handing it over in the way Sam still grabs it tightly.

Dean takes a glance inside, sees his tapes and folded clothes, the shirts on top like John taught them.

"Because I tried everything." Sam pauses, swallows and visibly collects himself. "I did, Dean. And nothing worked. And I had nothing left, nothing else and--

"I lost my faith." He stares at the box.

"I gave it up and you with it. But instead here you are. He brought you back."

***

"God exists," Castiel says and they are in a motel room with green leaves on the wallpaper. A small sun-shaped mirror on the wall. Sam's empty bed.

"Six men died, tonight," Dean tells Castiel and it's not a challenge, it's not a question anymore. But it comes out faintly accusing anyway. Because this is a war, Castiel had said but Dean had never liked to fight wars like this and having God on his side should count for something. It should.

"You could have…." Saved those men. Saved Hastings. Done something.

Castiel shakes his head. "You have to learn, Dean. I'll teach you," he says, "how to be His instrument."

Dean shakes his head, "I don't--"

Castiel cocks his head sideways, makes an impatient gesture like Dean's a difficult child. It's enough to stop Dean in the middle of voicing his doubts.

"God exists and He has work for you," Castiel says.

The lesson's hard, though. Hard to watch the bodies; to salt and burn them while seeing fathers and brothers and sons. It's hard considering their deaths a victory.

Castiel steps closer. Dean has nothing but green leaf covered wall at his back, and the otherworldly blue in Castiel's eyes in front of him. Castiel's lips on his own and they leave there unremembered terror and pain. Memories that are made of darkness and loss. Lost, I am lost.

Castiel wipes them away with a small touch of his fingers on Dean's temple. Tender, like the one of a father.

After, he whispers instructions in Dean's ears. A place and a town like coordinates on paper.

***

Sam smiles when Dean tells him, packs his duffle in record time and then waits impatiently by the car while Dean grabs his stuff at a slower pace. He puts his clothes and the shotgun inside his bag. The knife from under the pillow ends inside his boot.

"C'mon," Sam shouts from the car. "We're burning daylight."

"Where did you go last night?" Dean asks before revving up the engine. But Sam shrugs and doesn't answer.

"We better hurry." He smiles that small, secretive smile. "You don't want to make our angel wait, right?"

They go, he and Sam. Dean the blunt instrument and Sam the belief behind it.

***

Castiel says. "I'm going to teach you how to serve Him. Because great is the reward for those who walk in His light."

He kisses away Dean's scars from the last hunt, this time. Leaves unblemished skin in their stead and doesn't let Dean get lost again.

"Because you were lost," Castiel says before he goes. "But He found you."

***

Dean recites this time, "Humiliare sub potenti manu Dei, contremisce et effuge, invocato a nobis sancto et terribili nomine, quem inferi tremunt."

The demon flees the body it's raping and trembles in its shapeless smoky form before it dissipates.

Sam's smile is one of satisfaction.

Dean doesn't smile, but thinks of a God whose name makes Hell tremble. Of a God who commanded Castiel to save him. Of a God who chose Dean so he can do His work.

And Dean too, trembles.

\--


End file.
